How silence leads to more silence

I’ve been quiet. Too quiet. There are times where I have to retreat just because I only have so much energy to go around. And I thought last years holidays would be hard with our loss so fresh– this years holidays were no less strange or sad.

I found I couldn’t write. It’s a very constipated feeling that I’m sure everyone is familiar with. There’s a lot of advice on what to do– the best usually being to write through it. I found that I didn’t even have the energy for that. I’d come up with an idea I wanted to explore and then I just couldn’t follow through. I’d write a bit, know where I wanted to go, and STILL found myself suddenly without the energy to just complete the scene.

I’m getting some energy back now, so I am blaming the imbalance of the holidays. But it’s still hard to get back into things. I’ve been wanting to make a blog post for at least a month just to say that I haven’t given up, but I’d been away so long I didn’t exactly know where to start.

So I started writing a personal journal in an actual notebook. It’s a start. I’ve even started reviewing the stuff I’ve written last year, the ideas I’ve had, and I’m attempting to throw down some short story ideas that have been percolating under my thoughts. More starts, and hopefully a few more things that will get finished.

Trying not to be, part of just letting go. It also helps to come back to things fresh and with new tricks learned. I’m still reading through Bradbury’s short stories. I’m amazed at things he would write about. More important lessons.